By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net, Engineering is his profession but community activism is Faizur Rahman’s passion. Urdu-speaking native of Chennai, he writes on religio-political issues in mainstream newspapers of India. Faizur Rahman is an executive committee member of Harmony India, an organisation to promote secularism and communal harmony which is headed by Mr. N. Ram, the Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu. He is also the founding secretary of Forum for the Promotion of Moderate Thought in Islam. He talked to TwoCircles.net on ways Muslims in India can improve their economic conditions only if we check some wasteful and unnecessary expenditures. TCN : Recently in a workshop attended by Muslim community leaders, you created quite a ruckus by saying that Muslims should not go for umra every year. Why are you against umra? FR : Please allow me to clarify. First of all, I am not against Umra. I only pointed out that Umra not being an obligatory ritual in Islam one need not perform it every...
We Live in Cairo, a production at @americanrep beautifully captures the Egyptian revolution of 2011. The confusion, idealism, and optimism during the start of revolution to struggle, comradery, and jubilation of success, and then disagreements, sacrifice, and despair as post- revolutionary reality turns out to be a negative image of the dream. Writers Daniel Lazour and Patrick Lazour have done an excellent job in capturing the nuances of the Tahrir Uprising through this musical. No stereotypical representation of Egypt or Egyptian. No whitewashing of complexities of this revolution. The cast brings a high energy performance that spills over to the audience and the audience joins in clapping when the revolution succeeds and sinks in their seats deeper during the second act. The creative team has done a wonderful job of capturing the emotion and confusion as the revolution began to unravel and hijacked. People were so busy fighting Mubarak regime that there was no consensus de...
In Surah As-Saffat, Allah declares Himself as Rabb-ul-Mashaariq i.e. Lord of the easts. Not sure why most translators have translated it as the Lord of the sunrises. But if we stick to original Arabic then question arises east from where? is it east from the reader's perspective or east of Hijaz? Also, how many easts are there? As-Saaffat Lord of the heavens and of the earth and all that is between them, and Lord of the sun's risings. (5) Lo! We have adorned the lowest heaven with an ornament, the planets; (6) سورة الصَّافات وہ پروردگار ہے آسمانوں کا اور زمین کا اور جو کچھ ان کے درمیان میں ہے اور پروردگار ہے طلوع کرنے کے مواقع کا۔ (۵) ہم ہی نے رونق دی ہے اسی طرف والے آسمان کو عجیب آرائش یعنی ستاروں کے ساتھ۔ (۶) Next verse, except for Pickthall everyone translate kavakib as start. It says that stars are ornaments of the sky (nearest heaven), this also raises lot of questions about nature and function of the stars. And then continue reading till verse number 10....
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